


Who Is In Control?

by LLReid



Series: Reunited [6]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Dark MC!!!, Dark MC???, Destiny, F/F, Fate, Multi, Other, Psychic Abilities, Psychic vampire, Tree of Death, Tree of Life, Vampire Queens, Vampires, bloodkeeper, psychic powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23062393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Fic inspired by Halsey’s song ‘Control’.On the island...~~~~~“From Rheya and from me. You’re all blinded by your feelings for me. The darkness in me is growing and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to resist it.“ She sighed, refusing to look at anyone. “I can walk through your futures at any moment I choose, but I’m in your pasts as well. I’m always in the shadows and always in the light. And though I’m dangerous, when I’m in my right mind I don’t think I pose a threat to you... but if I lose control for even a second... there is no power on earth strong enough to stop me.”
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: Reunited [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608706
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Who Is In Control?

In her long life, Kamilah had seen many things that would forever leave an imprint on her mind. She’d seen civilisations rise and crumble, she’d fought in wars, she’d ended lives and she’d saved them... but nothing that she had witnessed could have prepared her for the sight of her precious Anastasia so drawn to the Tree of Death. Out of their number, the first bloodkeeper-turned-vampire was the only one not incapacitated by being so close to it, she actually seemed to be drawing some sort of divine strength from it.

Kamilah watched in silence as the parts of Anastasia she knew and loved — the giggles and the bubbly curiosity, the beaming smiles, the all encompassing happiness and optimism — fell away until only the darkest, most forbidding part of her remained. She was only the first bloodkeeper-turned-vampire now. In some sort of deep trance that she hadn’t the first idea how to free her from. But she was still the woman she loved with her whole heart.

“Anastasia, you shouldn’t get any closer,” Adrian coughed.

“You don’t hear it?,” Anastasia asked. The girl’s voice was so serene, so... eerie... as she gaped at the charred tree ahead of them, its twisted roots captivating her attention. Seeing her eyes the way they were sent a coldness deep under Kamilah’s skin, where it spread like a stain.

“Hear what?!,” shrieked Lily.

“The voice,” the redhead replied, without even looking in Lily’s direction. “It’s so... familiar. Don’t you hear it?”

“Voice?,” Kamilah prodded. “What voice?”

“There is no voice!,” Gaius yelled.

“It’s calling me. It sounds like the past, doesn’t it? But not the dead past. It's so alive. It’s... everything.”

“My love—“

“It’s alright,” Anastasia assured her as she began to walk away from her and towards the tree. “He won’t hurt me.”

“He?!,” Jax yelled. “What the fuck is she talking about?!”

“Are you always like this? All dressed up in adrenaline and no place to go?,” Gaius snapped at Jax.

“Shut up!,” Jax yelled.

“The Bloodkeeper isn’t the only one who appears to have lost her mind,” Gaius snarled.

Using what little of her strength that she had left, Kamilah reached out and grabbed a rock from the forest floor and hurled it at Gaius’ head. Nobody would dare say a bad word about Anastasia in her presence... she’d tear them limb from limb.

“Was that necessary, Kamilah?!,” he shrieked.

A person can plan for things, work towards them for years, and yet they never actually materialise. Or they can just happen to be in the right place at the right moment, and everything somehow falls into place exactly as its supposed to. Fate, some would call them being exactly where they were under the set of circumstances they were. Luck, another. Kamilah wasn’t entirely sure which it was as she watched her lover in some sort of trance, reaching out to touch the most deadly thing in the world. However, fate was a particularly capricious character. Sometimes she would stand there blocking the doorway one was born to pass through due to nothing more than right-of-blood, and sometimes she grabbed them by the head and dragged them through the moment they happened to poke their nose out. Luck was more like the stars; she simply gazed down and kept her counsel, her light shining on all but only truly appreciated by a chosen few.

“Anastasia, what are you doing?!,” Jax screamed from somewhere behind her. “Stop it! You have to stop!”

“That’s suicide!,” Lily yelled.

Before Kamilah could do anything to stop her Anastasia turned around, the blue pupils and the whites of her eyes completely overtaken by a blood red glow. She was utterly awash with power, like a galaxy born from a dying star. Her long ginger hair floating around her like the flickering flames of the campfire they’d been sitting around only hours before, her entire body reverberating with the sheer strength of her abilities and with a single, almost bored flick of her hand a massive wave of her power was cast in their direction.

Every single tree crashed to the ground, shaking the Earth as they fell, and the air had that magically still quality more common in autumn months. The whole world felt crisp and bright, and time seemed suspended as everyone was suddenly cast into the air, the sounds of screams and destruction of the forest echoing across the island as they were hurled a safe distance from the tree, landing in a tangled heap of aching limbs. 

“What the hell is she doing?!,” Jax asked.

“She’s... she’s talking to the tree...,” Adrian winced.

“Why isn’t it killing her?,” asked Lily. “Why is she... she doesn’t seem like herself.”

Gaius scoffed. “Like herself?! The girl you lot were carting around and keeping ignorant of her destiny was the ruse. This is her true form. This is what she is. What she was always meant to be. Dangerous. Powerful. Able to survive things that even we cannot. A goddess.”

“Stop! I don’t accept that and will kill you the next time you dare call her that!,” Kamilah snarled. Ignoring the aching in her body she shakily clambered to her feet, stumbling into Adrian the moment she was upright.

“Don’t,” he whispered, holding her by the waist. “If you try to run over there and save her you die. You have to let her handle this by herself.”

“Let me go,” she snapped, struggling violently against his grasp. Under normal circumstances bucking free of someone so much younger than her wouldn’t have been much of a struggle, but after everything they’d been through she simply didn’t have the strength. “Adrian, you let me go! God damn you! I’ve already lost her once! I have to help her—“

“Sister, look at her. She is not in danger.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know what’s going on inside her head right now!”

“She won’t want to survive if you don’t,” Lily sniffled. “We have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.”

“You know her,” Jax added. “She’s batshit but she usually has a point.”

At that, she went limp in Adrian’s arms, having neither the strength or will to fight or argue back. She felt weak and helpless, unable to do anything but watch on as Anastasia did... whatever it was that she was doing. But it wasn’t all right. The whole world felt discordant and wrong, with colours that were too bright and sounds so loud they made her jump. Her whole body felt hollow, and no matter what she tried to do, she couldn’t actually do it.

Kamilah was old enough to know that it is always impossible to say exactly why we love something or someone. Sure, if someone had to ask her she could come up with reasons why she loved Anastasia if she had to, but the important things happened in the dark, far beyond the realms of her control. But part of her had known it from the first moment they’d locked eyes across the conference room at Raines Corp; Anastasia was the love of her life.

From that first world-shattering moment she had known that there was something in her. Something that was pure, delicious...horror. Everything that one was supposed to watch out for. Heights. Fire. Shards of glass. Everything that most feint hearted individuals would likely shy away from, too intimidated to take on. Everything Kamilah was, also. For so long the problem had simply been waiting for the right person to be born. One quick glance at the works of Plato’s told her everything she needed to know: just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's really all a person needs.

Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? Even being as old as she was, Kamilah couldn’t look back at the earliest days she’d known Anastasia with much clarity at all. When she looked back her emotions and the thing between her legs clouded her vision. People often spoke about inspiration; about a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, but perhaps everything was just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall from a tree at a particular moment. That point has been reached, that's all. It has to happen, and it does happen. 

Perhaps some things were simply meant to be.

She stayed quiet for a few moments, simply watching on in a mixture of horror and fascination as Anastasia’s powers grew and grew. The youngest member of their family was and had been the glue that held them together since the moment she’d been the most integral piece in uniting the clans in her mortal life. It was her who usually soothed people when they felt this way. It was her who Adrian, Lily, and Jax had tried to protect just as fiercely as Kamilah had. But watching on so helplessly she wondered, what did it take to break a person like Anastasia?

Professional torturers and interrogators would be able to provide statistics, she was sure. This many nights without sleep, this many needles, this much water, this voltage of current on this many occasions, this specific set of life-and-death circumstances hurled in your face this amount of times. That’s precisely what Anastasia had been forced to withstand, a very specific kind of torture that absolutely no one would ever deem fair.

But Kamilah knew there was considerable variation in people's ability to withstand any sort of torture. Sometimes one can achieve the desired result simply by showing the instruments and explaining what is to be done with them. Sometimes it took weeks; one may be forced to restart a heart which has given out from the pain, and even then one may not manage to break the subject down. However, it was presumably possible to discern some kind of average. This many near death experiences, this many deaths witnessed, this many battles fought on the frontlines of a war that would either save or destroy the entire world, before most people are sufficiently destroyed to give up what they once held most dear. 

But in everyday vampire life? It was considerably more complex an issue to be faced with and one that would likely take centuries to fully recover from.

“You really do love her don’t you?,” Gaius asked, quietly.

Kamilah glared at him. “What gave it away?”

“I’ve known you for more than two thousand years and you never once looked at me that way. You want her as you’ve wanted nothing and no one since I made you and she needs you as much as the air she breathes.”

“You see all that and yet you still ended her mortal life without a second thought. I was forced to hold her as she died because of you.”

“Kamilah—“

“That doesn’t get forgiven,” she interjected. “Ever.”

When Anastasia at last turned to face them she flashed a smile that looked more like an agonised grimace than her usual beaming. Her eyes were back to the blue and gold of a summer sky, and Kamilah wanted nothing more than to fall headlong into their bright depths, not to lose herself but to be found. As her god-like powers faded it became clear just how exhausted she was. All of a sudden she looked so worn out that she didn’t look as if she could ever get up again, much less exert the sort of raw power she had only moments beforehand. It was so easy to forget that she’d been alive for barely more than two decades. She was only a young woman. A wounded young woman.

Looking at her as she had approached the tree had been the closest thing to witnessing a divine event that Kamilah had ever experienced. It had been like looking at the sun and Anastasia had shone so brightly that she’d had to look away. But now? Now, as she turned her back on the tree and walked towards them, it was like what she presumed watching someone you loved wasting away with cancer was like, and then being shown a cancer cell through one of Adrian’s microscopes. That? That is destined to save the world? This little thing?

“Are you all alright?,” Anastasia asked, her voice distant and almost completely monotonous. “I didn’t mean to throw you so hard but it’s all I could do to stop you dying.”

“Don’t worry about us.” Tentatively, Kamilah caressed her cheek, drawing her attention so that she was looking her right in the face. “What... what happened?”

“I met my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather?,” Adrian echoed.

“Demetrius.”

“Demetrius is your grandfather? What the shit?,” Lily blurted out. “Does that mean Rheya...”

“Is my grandmother? Yes,” Anastasia replied as casually as if she were ordering her morning coffee, seeming so distant from the world around her it was as if she was almost bored with the information. “Kano’s prophecy about the sap of the tree of life and the tree of death meeting was referring to me. My blood.”

“How is that possible?,” Gaius asked. “Rheya and Demetrius had only one child and she—“

“Iola didn’t die,” Anastasia said. 

“That’s impossible... Rheya said—“

“Just because something seems impossible doesn’t make it untrue, Gaius,” Anastasia sighed. “As the only descendant of Rheya and Demetrius, she was the first Bloodkeeper... the first one to carry these abilities that have been passed through the women of my bloodline for generations. The moment I became a vampire I became the last Bloodkeeper... but also the first... the only one with the power to decide what becomes of the world.”

Jax flinched. “What does that mean?”

The girl remained quiet for a few moments, and Kamilah knew she was mentally psyching herself up to say something that she didn’t want to. She reminded her of the way the biggest of male lions look; sad, as if their nobility is a terrible burden to bear.

“It’s what we’ve only guessed at out loud but have all known for a while, I think; when I step out to face Rheya, I will step out alone. Neither one of us can live whilst the other survives.” She took a deep breath. “I’m the only thing standing between her and the end of the world. I’m literally the only one who can maybe stop her.”

Bile rose up in Kamilah’s throat and she was cast back to when Anastasia had been mortal, when she’d secretly spent every moment fearing that some unavoidable tragedy would snatch the girl away from her. Her life now had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everything before her was preamble. Now she had Anastasia. One day, and perhaps one day soon, there was a very real chance she would be gone, and her life would be over.

“You have us,” Adrian said.

“Yeah, you’re not alone,” Jax added.

Anastasia laughed humourlessly and shook her head. “You guys aren’t understanding... there is literally nothing that anyone can do to help me. This is my destiny. The reason I was born. The reason Iola survived. The reason I found my way into the centre of vampire society without seeking it out. All of it has been leading up to this final confrontation where Rheya will fight the heir of her bloodline. It’s all on me now.”

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Lily said, “you might be the chosen one but this is a lot bigger than just you. We’re in this together.”

“I don’t know if I can save you, if I can save any of you!,” Anastasia snapped. 

“Save us from Rheya?,” Kamilah asked, softly.

“From Rheya and from me. You’re all blinded by your feelings for me. The darkness in me is growing and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to resist it.“ She sighed, refusing to look at anyone. “I can walk through your futures at any moment I choose, but I’m in your pasts as well. I’m always in the shadows and always in the light. And though I’m dangerous, when I’m in my right mind I don’t think I pose a threat to you... but if I lose control for even a second... there is no power on earth strong enough to stop me.”

Ignoring everyone else, Kamilah drew Anastasia into an embrace, which she returned immediately. “Even if that were true, I’ll find a way to be with you in the darkness, I promise. And when you think the whole world has abandoned you, I’ll be there, holding your hand, helping you maintain your control.”

Anastasia nodded. “I have to decide what to do to survive, and do it, but I couldn’t live with myself if I had to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Kamilah assured her.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She peppered a few kisses onto the crown of her head. “I know your visions and nightmares have been frightening you. They are a trick of the light, one that makes something distant seem closer and larger than it really is. That’s not to say Rheya isn’t a significant threat or that your destiny isn’t frightening, but fearing yourself isn’t doing you any good.”

“If I could stop, I would. It’s just... it’s not that simple.”

“I know, my love, I know. I see you, even when you hide from the rest of the world. I hear you, even when you’re silent,” she murmured, resting her brow against hers. It was the purest definition of love. “I cannot shield you from the challenges you will face. You will know great loss and danger, but also great joy. You may doubt your instincts in the days to come, but your feet have been walking this path since the moment you were born. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“How can you have so much faith in me. Like I’m—“

“Like you’re worthy of it?,” she asked, rhetorically. Neither anyone else nor her next taste of fresh blood mattered as much as knowing that she was safe and within arm’s reach. If that was what it meant to be bewitched, she was a lost cause. “Before you I was nothing but a miserable collection of dust and shadows. You, more than anyone ever has, have earned my respect and my trust. You brought me to life. And I cannot survive without you. To every question I have ever had, or ever will have, you are the answer. I’ve lost you once, it's far too soon for me to imagine losing you again, alright?”

“Alright,” Anastasia whispered. “Though, I don’t believe that there is such a thing as ‘too soon’. Not anymore. All of us are asked to grow up far too quickly. It’s the way that life — no matter how long — reminds us that it is still only a breath. The question of why you're here — how we're all here — really does consume you...doesn’t it?”

“It's the only question worth asking,” Kamilah replied. “I’ve never told you this, but to be a vampire is to continuously choose life — your life, not someone else’s — over and over again, day after day, century after century. You must prioritise it over sleep, over fear, over grief, over death. In the end, it is our relentless drive to live that defines us, that helps us maintain our gift of immortality. Without that, we are nothing but a nightmare or a ghost: a shadow of the humans that we once were.”

“Yes,” Gaius added, “mortals can convince themselves up is down and black is white. It’s their special gift... but not us. Not you.”

“He’s... he’s actually right on the money for once,” Lily smiled, sheepishly.

“The world relying on the shoulders of a six-month-old killer is a terrifying prospect,” Gaius said. “But... you’re... stronger than I thought you’d be.”

“That was almost nice of you,” Adrian mumbled.

Anastasia nodded, looking at Kamilah. “And you’ll keep your promise, right? You’ll be right there beside me?”

“How could it be otherwise?,” Kamilah whispered. “When you are my heart.”

\- fin.


End file.
